The admins over there have some profoundly questionable views, which tends to push away reasonable people and attract bootlickers.
The problem is not the users as much as the site itself and its admins. I wish reasonable people (not bootlickers) would stop using lemmy.ml and go somewhere better. Lemmy.ml's biggest function right now is to scare away good people who would have been happy elsewhere.
Having an ideological focus for an entire instance feels like a major mistake. I can understand one admin having that take, but not the whole team. Thanks for the heads up.
I think instances with ideological underpinnings is fine, and maybe inevitable. The crucial thing is that they need to be honest about it, so that those not interested can go elsewhere.
The problem with lemmy.ml is that it pretends to be a catch-all instance when it's in fact very much not, and that it doesn't tell users up front what it's all about. Both Hexbear and Lemmygrad are better in that respect—at least they're honest.
Part of the sign up process I went through was to copy a line from something Marx wrote (can't remember now I'm a bad communist) to be approved for an account.
Maybe it wasn't like that in the past but it was made clear in the sign up processs that the admins are ML communists and run their instance with those beliefs informing their moderation decisions.
It is true though, users should be able to pick up on that the instance that makes copying communist theory a part of the sign up process might have communists.
...except its not really communist, like north korea's no way a proper communist country (not that there's any that even existed); just some shitty dictatorship
Btw, the ml in lemmy.ml stands for Marxist-Leninist if you didn't know. The moderation on lemmy.ml has been consistently removing posts and banning people for posting anything pro-US, pro-EU or pretty much pro-anything that's not capitalism. Notable exceptions to that rule are Russia and China where their capitalism and imperialism are ok.
My personal political ideology is social democracy with heavy emphasis on the social part but that's too moderate apparently.
Foe the little time I spend there I'm pretty sure it's not only that, it sounds a lot like they were pit together by some russian/chinese propaganda offices. The amount of praise and propaganda, sometimes even dumb ones, is out of normal political debate
The thing that is funny about Piefed vs. Lemmy is the level of authoritarian control the admin has over what you see and whether votes count or not. Specifically, they can open each instance connected with them and add a vote weight to the instance. So if they didn't like ML, instead of blocking the instance, you can set the weight to 0, and then those users would have no idea that their votes do not contribute to a rank at all. You can take an individual user and set their account to ban comments, ban posts, or both, which effectively shadow bans a user. If they're remote, the comments, or posts never arrive at the piefed instance. None of this is visible to the end user, by the way, no alerts that this is happening to your account. You can be kicked from a community by moderators, an action that you will not even know is happening to you.
It leaves you to wonder how much of what you're seeing is an accurate tally of votes and score. It seems driven purely to keep out opposing perspectives and stifle thought. None of these "tanky" instances have this level of user and content manipulation at their disposal. The Admin of a piefed instance can shape the feed silently, and without users even knowing it is happening, through the use of vote weights. Which is a pretty nasty feature if I'm being honest. One of the things people assumed was happening on Reddit was that the feed wasn't an honest representation of user activity, that the feed itself was ideologically bias (one way or the other), and yet piefed explicitly gives you those tools.
You can go to https://piefed.social/instances and check the vote weight of any instance. It'll be very boring tho because they're all set to "Votes are weighted at the normal level." Yes, even lemmy.ml.
The thing that is funny about Piefed vs. Lemmy is the level of authoritarian control the admin has over what you see and whether votes count or not. Specifically, they can open each instance connected with them and add a vote weight to the instance. So if they didn’t like ML, instead of blocking the instance, you can set the weight to 0, and then those users would have no idea that their votes do not contribute to a rank at all.
Are any Piefed instances doing any of this right now?
You can take an individual user and set their account to ban comments, ban posts, or both, which effectively shadow bans a user. If they’re remote, the comments, or posts never arrive at the piefed instance. None of this is visible to the end user, by the way, no alerts that this is happening to your account.
I'm not aware of this. In any case, the ban functions on Piefed are undergoing changes right now anyway.
You can be kicked from a community by moderators, an action that you will not even know is happening to you.
When you say "moderators" do you mean admins here or community moderators?
The Admin of a piefed instance can shape the feed silently, and without users even knowing it is happening, through the use of vote weights. Which is a pretty nasty feature if I’m being honest. One of the things people assumed was happening on Reddit was that the feed wasn’t an honest representation of user activity, that the feed itself was ideologically bias (one way or the other), and yet piefed explicitly gives you those tools.
I can see a valid use-case for smaller instances that might want to elevate their own communities within their own local feeds. I think it would be pretty poor if any larger instance used this tool, but I am sure that all of these toggles can display publicly - so users on an instance would know if their experience is being gamed or curated by the admins of a local instance.
Yeah, it's not that people don't like the lemmy.ml users, or even really their mods...
It's (at least one of) the admins.
If they see something they don't like on their server, they delete it and give a very very short ban. Because they don't want those people gone. They want them enraged and chomping at the bit to come back.
It's ran like a troll instance, and it's not alone.
The only time they permanently ban someone, is when they see someone in a neutral place they can't control talking about it. Advocate for people blocking them, and they don't want anyone signed up to their instance seeing your comments
It's only baffling if you don't listen to the actual reasons people believe things and just assume it's because Russia used to be socialist, regardless of how many people say otherwise.
Liberals will refuse to listen to our explanations of our positions and then call our positions bizarre and indecipherable. Because you get your understanding of our positions from stories you make up and pass around about us that have no basis in reality.
Not a single person says the Russian Federation is socialism. You're confusing people critically supporting its movements against the US Empire with people believing it to be socialist. They do have rising socialist sympathies among the populace, but that doesn't make them socialist.
I was just banned from there because I said The Invasion into Ukraine is murdering people. They called me a fascist because I kept saying I don't agree with murdering people.
So there were groups of a certain type of people in a country so bomb and murder the entire civilian populations of cities? Russia has fascist leadership, do you think we should blow up Moscow? Trump is a fascist, should we bomb NYC? Your logic is crap.
The US knew it could pull Russia into war by pushing for Ukrainian NATO membership, a membership they were never going to honor. By NATO's own admission Ukraine is too corrupt for membership
Is Russia not big boy enough to make decisions on its own? They had to go to war with someone because of a threat of a country next to them joining NATO even though there was no hope to join nato? Maybe Russia should get their shit together then. Ukraine was part of NATO partners for peace in the early 90s. They've wanted to be part of NATO. Pretending Russia was forced into it is ridiculous.
Look! Carefully curated pictures that help tell the chosen narrative!
This is as bad a a the bullshit man-on-the-street videos where they edit out all the ones that make valid opposing point. Want democrats to look stupid? Interview 100 people and only show the small handful of them that said dumb shit.
What’s funny and a bit of a bummer, is that you don’t know how funny everyone thinks it is when you share dumb shit like thinks.
Also, you’re here proving every single point against .ml.
No, no, it's only untrustworthy American propaganda when it challenges their world view. Right now it's a series of cherry-picked, possibly altered snips designed to push the fascists narrative, so it's great.
Also, everyone who disagrees with you is a liberal.
Look at Godlesscommies posts as an example. Complete moron who thinks Ukraine are all Nazis and that Russia is saving the day by murdering them, kidnapping their children, and stealing their land.
They'll never consider that Russia aligned with the Nazis at the beginning of WW2, they'll never see China and Russia as more imperialist than America, and they try to hide behind the guise of communism or socialism being a decent idea because on paper everyday people share the wealth, but ignore that literally every one of their dog shit communist countries are authoritarian dictatorships who have no qualms killing anyone or engaging in genocide.
When it comes up, which isn't too often, I find I'm not really the model archetypal .ml user in outlook and have run afoul of a few people that took exception to that there, but that came in the form of angry comments about the thing I said and either the literal meaning of it or sometimes what they took it to mean, and for a forum that seems entirely appropriate. I was briefly banned from one of the communities there once too because I was accused of being a bot. Funnily enough I actually didn't notice that and it had been overturned by the time found out there was a modlog and figured this out.
It would be hard for me to know obviously, but based on this experience, it doesn't seem to me that they're particularly ban-happy, particularly not instance wide. Kind of a bummer that happened to you. I'm fairly happy basing my account there and speaking my mind when I see fit. I do pick up the prevailing winds and can accurately presume what would and wouldn't be taken well, but I don't generally feel a need to self-censor or worry about bans.
My ban has been lifted now. Are you able to tell me how to find the modlog? I'd like to see what they actually banned me for. There was a point where I said I thought Russia should be broken up and given to it's neighbors and they started responding by claiming I wanted nuclear war and posting pictures of Hitler. It was pretty over the top. I am wondering if that was what got me the ban. When I log in to my ml account I can't find anything, no message or anything, that says what the ban was for.
I'm sure I remembered it being easier, but basically if you access the Lemmy instance in question via a browser rather than an app (might work on apps too but not mine), there's a modlog link at the bottom of the page which shows you the mod activity generally, and then on that page you can filter by user and type the name of the user who's modlog you'd like to see.
Thanks! It says I broke rule 1: "No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia." However I don't see where I did that. Re-reading all the comments I don't say anything like any of those.
Hmm yeh that's definitely a pressure point issue there. I guess I do self-censor somewhat in that I know the type of reception that can be expected on that topic if not following the orthodoxy so unless I'm prepared to vigorously defend something I have to say on it, then I generally don't say much on it, wouldn't want to go in half-cocked or try to persuade any one of anything unless I was pretty sure it was a new insightful take that might be able to ride above the fray and bridge some fundamental disagreements.
From my perspective, it's difficult to say how your comments exactly contravene this rule 1 as stated directly. But then you did go ahead and suggest Russia should be wiped off the map as part of your defence of why it isn't reasonable to use corruption as a pretext to wipe another country off the map. I think suggesting that as a fait acompli conclusion and the only option was bound to raise a few eyebrows and while it doesn't neatly explicitly fit the categories mentioned in rule 1, I guess one could say that that suggestion dances around a mixture of 3 of them. Maybe someone was trying to shoehorn the statement in to one of the existing rules as pretext.
Russia being wiped from the map doesn't mean you kill all the people it just is the country and as I said it should be split up. I think there's a difference between internal corruption and invading another country. I believe I was banned because someone simply didn't agree with me and they could have simply just not responded and thumbs down if they didnt like what I said. But whatever though, the person that originally posted just wanted to know what was up with them and I was letting them know.
Edit: I have been on .ml since the Reddit evacuation/diaspora years ago. I have never been banned until just recently. Once I said mental retardation. It wasn't directed at any particular person I wasn't calling anyone specific a name however I understand that people consider that improper and I probably shouldn't have said it. I'll take it. This most recent one I think is a little ridiculous and I previously had not understood why people got so bent out of shape about the instance. Different folks different beliefs etc. At this point I'm going to abandon that instance though because I can't voice an opinion. So just going to move on
Oh, hi, it's Mr Asymmetric Demands for Proof again!
How about for a change, you go and dig about in the modlog instead of demanding everyone else does?
Provide a witness statement that you found out their .ml username and searched the modlog and found nothing, and you'll lend your viewpoint a shred of credibility. But without that, all we have to go on is your weird demands for proof that behaviour we all know the .ml mods are renowned for actually happened again for the 1758th time.
If someone says something happened on the fediverse without providing a link, they’re lying.
I say that you argued with me for hours and hours yesterday after I said that you were as unnecessarily argumentative and bad at backing down as the person you were calling toxic. I recall finding it amusingly ironic. I remember you being particularly upset when I pointed out that calling me names wasn't really proving me wrong. That's when you started swearing at me in DMs and calling me things you weren't prepared to call me in public.
I refuse to supply a link. Am I lying?
TL;DR Demanding proof that something that happens a lot happened again is reality denial masquerading as rationality.
More like flat earthers demanding proof that the world is round. Who disbelieves that .ml mods ban a lot of people for critisizing former communist countries?
So what, I get banned on any other ml and need to make another account? What does that benefit me? The conversation went just like it went here. Except I was called Hitler. To be fair, after being called Hitler I called someone else Hegseth.
No, I'm not saying you're lying, I'm asking for context and proof. It's hard to fake mod logs, but I could say .world banned me for saying Hitler was evil on another account.
Trust me, I know .ml is not great. YePowerTrippingBastards has proof.
My name is the same there, you can look. I did not use any slur in the thread I was banned in. I previously had said something was retarded in another thread and they got hot an bothered but that was not in that thread. The only name I called someone was a fascist after he called me a fascist.
It's the same username, just on .ml. They're just really obnoxious, the sort who goes down fighting about being allowed to say slurs while pretending it's about some higher principle.
After four days on that instance, have you not figured it out for yourself yet?
You will, eventually
Edit: a bit of instance-hopping is not unusual in the beginning. Part of the Lemmy experience is finding an instance where you feel comfortable. That might take a while and more than a few attempts.
Just a side note
The instance you’re on doesn’t really matter very much if you never read the local feed. If you do, you’ll definitely notice the local vibe sooner or later.
If you’re on an instance that is widely defederated, you may also notice that it’s difficult to find communities. Also, people may comment on your instance if it happens to be particularly notorious. The server hardware and bandwidth may also matter in some extreme cases.
Other than that, instances don’t really matter that much.
There are some exceptions to this. Blahaj blocks downvotes, for example. You can downvote a post on Blahaj, but people (like me) with accounts on Blahaj cannot downvote nor can they see downvotes. I'm sure there are other instances doing similar things, as it sounds like Lemmy has a robust set of instance settings/options.
That is a good point. Some instances have special rules and settings like that. Sounds a bit rare though. I haven't heard of many instances that put the extra effort into customizing the experience on that level
The instance matters if you post about anything political. If your instance admins don’t like your posts, they will delete your account. Mods and admins of other instances can only ban you.
To clarify, the instance only matters if that instance is, itself, inherently political (many ARE). There are many other instances which are apolitical and don’t censor posts based on political bias, unless it is especially extreme, but those are exceptions that are explained when it occurs, which is rarely.
It’s my philosophy that going around, uninformed and uninitiated, and even getting burned a few times is a great way, and possibly the best way, to discover where you really belong on Lemmy. I believe it to be a formative and even a necessary experience.
That’s really my advice for how to find the “correct instance for you”. Everyone here got there by trial and error, and I believe it is a formative enough experience that everyone should go through it. Once it became extremely easy to join Reddit, that’s when it started to go to shit.
It is (nearly) impossible to join and participate in Lemmy if you are a tech-illiterate moron. By the very fact that anyone is here means that everyone at least has a middling level of tech literacy and is somewhat intelligent, or else they would not only never have heard of Lemmy, and would not have been able to figure out how to join. Reddit used to be like that, once upon a time.
I took a look at those stats a while back, and the defederation procedure totally goes both ways.
As far as I can tell, bigger instances have bumped into issues that were resolved through defederation. Smaller instances haven't faced those kinds of problems, so they haven't defederated with any instances yet.
If all the big instances have defederated your instance, that's clear sign that there might be something wrong with that place. If your instance has defederated from a bunch of other instances, take a look at the size of that instance before drawing conclusions. For example lemmy.world is a special case and a clear outlier.
Haven't asked the admins, but here's my guess.
Being the most well known instance means that you get a lot of traffic. Let's say that 1% of the people using your instance are annoying morons. In a smaller instance that 1% translates to maybe one ban a month or whatever. In a bigger place, it becomes a constant onslaught stupid idiot bullshit nobody has the time or energy to deal with. Either you get a bunch of admins and mods to deal with that nonsense or you start banning users more aggressively. If that doesn't help, you may need to look at the instance where those troublemakers come from. If you notice that a particular instance pops up disproportionately often, you might want to consider defederating from it.
However, some part of that drama is public on fediseer. Have a look. Just scroll down to censures given and read the reasons why lemmy.world has defederated from so many instances.
I’ve tried reading my local and federated feeds but found little value in them. Most posts are either too niche, too uninteresting or just fly straight over my head. Consequently, I prefer to stick with the subscribed feed almost exclusively. That’s where I can reliably find stuff worth my time.
No, I don't think 4 days is enough to distinguish between a user's hot take and an instance's position. I didn't focus on the local feed, so I wouldn't have known. Most of the posts I've seen have been centered on Linux and privacy.
As I keep scrolling, though, I can see some troubling posts.
OK, I apologize for my tone. I’m not here to criticize you. I am legitimately interested in helping:
All of those things you mentioned? Do all of that. Focus on your local feed, check out comments that originate from your instance. That’s how you will get a good feel for those who subscribed to your instance.
And, as others have mentioned, you can sign up to any instance and still interact, however, you are still beholden to the rules of rest of Lemmy. Follow the rules of whatever community you’re commenting or posting in, sure, but, aside from the instances that are defederated, you can interact, post, comment, vote, whatever, regardless of your home instance. It’s just that a lot of people take particular care in choosing their home instance, and they choose a home instance that sociopolitically aligns with their own views.
This is neither necessary, nor demanded from the vast majority of Lemmy users, but it is good practice. It’s just how Lemmy was designed, and if you’re not interested in doing that, fine.
Like any other online interaction forum, what really matters is the quality of your posts and or comments.
It's all good, I appreciate it. I've been approaching Lemmy as a reddit alternative, so I'm still learning about how to explore the fediverse. I'll review instances more critically, thank you.
I unfortunately stumbled into lemmy.ml from /c/all... Every time it's just anger and communist propaganda, which is one of the reasons I left reddit. I've completed muted the instance and my experience on Lemmy has improved significantly.
That's because most of them think they'd be running the utopia. They're just the other side of the same coin with authoritarians/fascist they just think they're gonna be in charge this time.
.ml devs have basically made it so that new users see .ml at the top of the randomly join instances pretty much always. There was a post about it a little while back. They're manipulating the join page to get new users to join there. So I'm guessing this new user joined it because it's what they saw as an option to join the fediverse on the signup page
You might look on MeanwhileOnGrad. Many of the posts criticize .ml specifically.
It is the oldest instance, so many people join it, even if it is no longer the most popular. People complain about the general userbase for having a noticeable pro-Russia bias, but most of the criticism I see is directed at the admins specifically. They have this same bias and aggressively censor people with it. Other admins may enforce strict rules for the instance they envision of course but .ml is also noticeably not open about this. Much of the removed content is censored with the justification of "Rule 1" or similar, but as far as I'm aware these rules don't exist or at least are hidden from everyone expected to comply with them.
Edit: Forgot to mention, some people also complain that a portion of donations towards Lemmy's development goes to paying for .ml server costs. One of them also had a controversial take on trans rights I think, but I don't remember the details. At least one of the admins is fairly active and argumentative as well. When the admins are involved in this sort of drama it reflects poorly on the instance as a whole.
I don't have an issue with ml users in general as they are probably a diverse group, but the comms on that instance should be avoided, because of the pro authoritarian censorship.
Because sometimes you get what you deserve. They are completely out to lunch mentally. Some of the worst have to be paid shill accounts. No one who lives in the US can really believe that garbage. Unless they are rich and have never had a job. Block and block often.
Sh.itjust.works also has one of the most abrasive trolls who ban evades and attacks users and admins. You may have unfortunately ran into them under multiple names.
I think we are one of the larger servers so we just have a more visible share than smaller instances. Our admins are pretty on top of complaints about users.
Because liberals don't like being reminded of their part in the growing state of fascism in this country. They didn't like people pointing out they are what they claim to hate. That they are as delusional about their politicians as their conservative counterparts.
Oligarchy polling numbers are to the lowest they've ever been, the Revolution appears to be working out quite well. The only reason that liberals hate people on the actual left is because we remind you what bad people you are and the things that you support. You always support our movements after they've gained a majority approval and fight like hell against them until then.
Lot of assumptions there and a lot of empty words. All of that sounds like protecting the status quo, the white supremacy and fascism that it was built on.
The admins over there have some profoundly questionable views, which tends to push away reasonable people and attract bootlickers.
The problem is not the users as much as the site itself and its admins. I wish reasonable people (not bootlickers) would stop using lemmy.ml and go somewhere better. Lemmy.ml's biggest function right now is to scare away good people who would have been happy elsewhere.
Having an ideological focus for an entire instance feels like a major mistake. I can understand one admin having that take, but not the whole team. Thanks for the heads up.
I think instances with ideological underpinnings is fine, and maybe inevitable. The crucial thing is that they need to be honest about it, so that those not interested can go elsewhere.
The problem with lemmy.ml is that it pretends to be a catch-all instance when it's in fact very much not, and that it doesn't tell users up front what it's all about. Both Hexbear and Lemmygrad are better in that respect—at least they're honest.
Part of the sign up process I went through was to copy a line from something Marx wrote (can't remember now I'm a bad communist) to be approved for an account.
Maybe it wasn't like that in the past but it was made clear in the sign up processs that the admins are ML communists and run their instance with those beliefs informing their moderation decisions.
Technically it's Engels, in The Principles of Communism, last I checked.
Much appreciated. Haven't found any time to read anything, regrettably, but I have bookmarked your lists!
Awesome, thanks! I hope they're useful for you!
🤓
It is true though, users should be able to pick up on that the instance that makes copying communist theory a part of the sign up process might have communists.
...except its not really communist, like north korea's no way a proper communist country (not that there's any that even existed); just some shitty dictatorship
I joined during the Reddit exodus and I didn't have to do that. Was a little shocked to learn that later.
Btw, the ml in lemmy.ml stands for Marxist-Leninist if you didn't know. The moderation on lemmy.ml has been consistently removing posts and banning people for posting anything pro-US, pro-EU or pretty much pro-anything that's
notcapitalism. Notable exceptions to that rule are Russia and China where their capitalism and imperialism are ok.My personal political ideology is social democracy with heavy emphasis on the social part but that's too moderate apparently.
As far as they are concerned you are a graduate of the Austrian School of Economics.
Very true
Foe the little time I spend there I'm pretty sure it's not only that, it sounds a lot like they were pit together by some russian/chinese propaganda offices. The amount of praise and propaganda, sometimes even dumb ones, is out of normal political debate
They it's not only a political view, are unhinged.
Learned about this today, was mainly on lemmy.ml because lemmy.world was blocking too much instances -_- Now trying piefed.social
I've enjoyed piefed a lot so far. I think it's a good choice.
The thing that is funny about Piefed vs. Lemmy is the level of authoritarian control the admin has over what you see and whether votes count or not. Specifically, they can open each instance connected with them and add a vote weight to the instance. So if they didn't like ML, instead of blocking the instance, you can set the weight to 0, and then those users would have no idea that their votes do not contribute to a rank at all. You can take an individual user and set their account to ban comments, ban posts, or both, which effectively shadow bans a user. If they're remote, the comments, or posts never arrive at the piefed instance. None of this is visible to the end user, by the way, no alerts that this is happening to your account. You can be kicked from a community by moderators, an action that you will not even know is happening to you.
It leaves you to wonder how much of what you're seeing is an accurate tally of votes and score. It seems driven purely to keep out opposing perspectives and stifle thought. None of these "tanky" instances have this level of user and content manipulation at their disposal. The Admin of a piefed instance can shape the feed silently, and without users even knowing it is happening, through the use of vote weights. Which is a pretty nasty feature if I'm being honest. One of the things people assumed was happening on Reddit was that the feed wasn't an honest representation of user activity, that the feed itself was ideologically bias (one way or the other), and yet piefed explicitly gives you those tools.
I have just added code which makes the instance vote weight visible in the UI - https://codeberg.org/rimu/pyfedi/commit/04b54e25f44f54420c247152323c90c4a3360a02
You can go to https://piefed.social/instances and check the vote weight of any instance. It'll be very boring tho because they're all set to "Votes are weighted at the normal level." Yes, even lemmy.ml.
Are any Piefed instances doing any of this right now?
I'm not aware of this. In any case, the ban functions on Piefed are undergoing changes right now anyway.
When you say "moderators" do you mean admins here or community moderators?
I can see a valid use-case for smaller instances that might want to elevate their own communities within their own local feeds. I think it would be pretty poor if any larger instance used this tool, but I am sure that all of these toggles can display publicly - so users on an instance would know if their experience is being gamed or curated by the admins of a local instance.
Yeah, it's not that people don't like the lemmy.ml users, or even really their mods...
It's (at least one of) the admins.
If they see something they don't like on their server, they delete it and give a very very short ban. Because they don't want those people gone. They want them enraged and chomping at the bit to come back.
It's ran like a troll instance, and it's not alone.
The only time they permanently ban someone, is when they see someone in a neutral place they can't control talking about it. Advocate for people blocking them, and they don't want anyone signed up to their instance seeing your comments
No, their users are by and large insufferable fascist sympathisers. They're the reason ML gets a bad reputation.
Biggest issue is that said admins are the lemmy devs. .ml is their test instance.
Such as?
Lots of fairly wild accusations being made throughout this thread that I'd love to read up on to avoid the "just trust me bro" axiom.
https://sh.itjust.works/c/meanwhileongrad
This should get you up to speed.
I would just link people to the Megathread:
https://sh.itjust.works/post/37226752
O damn that's way better
They're tankies.
Why would you make this comment? Did you think it added to the discussion?
Because you asked:
Generally answering a question tends to add to a discussion, yes.
The admins are absolute cowards of the worst kind.
.ml is the official one created by the lemmy guys, who are tankies, and that instance has a lot of tankie opinions and bad takes.
Tankies traditionally but more recently pro-Russian imperial fascists, ruZi if you will.
Same thing in most cases.
I'd like to fully agree, but modern Russia is not even close to the old school soviet which they idolize.
Also true, which makes their modern Russia apologia that much more baffling. Well, not really, as any US adversary is good in their eyes.
Is Russia even a US adversary anymore?
Russia sees everyone else as either Russian or enemy of Russia.
Depends on your frame of reference, but I'd still say yes even if the president is a Russian asset.
You seem to think that having Trump on your side makes you pro America, but I strongly disagree.
Putin didn't campaign for his pet Trump to be president in offer to strengthen and enrich the USA!
In terms of population I don't think having Trump on your side makes you pro America, but "adversary" is a geopolitical term.
On the stage of geopolitics, the current US government acts in favor of Russia.
It's only baffling if you don't listen to the actual reasons people believe things and just assume it's because Russia used to be socialist, regardless of how many people say otherwise.
Liberals will refuse to listen to our explanations of our positions and then call our positions bizarre and indecipherable. Because you get your understanding of our positions from stories you make up and pass around about us that have no basis in reality.
I know I shouldn't bite, and it'll all end in tears, but this bait is too tempting!
What, specifically is good about specifically Russia as it is nowadays, from a leftist perspective, that isn't because it used to be socialist?!
I never said tankies support Russia because it used to be (allegedly) socialist,
I'm saying it's wild you promote it as AES when it fucking isn't.And I've heard the apologia for the Ukraine invasion, and it's all bullshit.
And I'm saying no one considers Russia to be AES, it's a strawman that libs tell each other about us until they forget they made it up.
Not a single person says the Russian Federation is socialism. You're confusing people critically supporting its movements against the US Empire with people believing it to be socialist. They do have rising socialist sympathies among the populace, but that doesn't make them socialist.
I got banned for calling that yogurtz guy a ruski simp.
And I'll do it again.
I was just banned from there because I said The Invasion into Ukraine is murdering people. They called me a fascist because I kept saying I don't agree with murdering people.
That's because they think Ukrainians are Nazis because Putin said so.
The entire worlds media saw them as the nazis they are before the war
Ok buddy
Liberals are always against every war except the current one
So there were groups of a certain type of people in a country so bomb and murder the entire civilian populations of cities? Russia has fascist leadership, do you think we should blow up Moscow? Trump is a fascist, should we bomb NYC? Your logic is crap.
The US knew it could pull Russia into war by pushing for Ukrainian NATO membership, a membership they were never going to honor. By NATO's own admission Ukraine is too corrupt for membership
Is Russia not big boy enough to make decisions on its own? They had to go to war with someone because of a threat of a country next to them joining NATO even though there was no hope to join nato? Maybe Russia should get their shit together then. Ukraine was part of NATO partners for peace in the early 90s. They've wanted to be part of NATO. Pretending Russia was forced into it is ridiculous.
This is an incredibly entertaining reach you’re attempting here. Hilarious! Love it!!
Funny how you always manage to have shit takes no matter the thread
Look! Carefully curated pictures that help tell the chosen narrative!
This is as bad a a the bullshit man-on-the-street videos where they edit out all the ones that make valid opposing point. Want democrats to look stupid? Interview 100 people and only show the small handful of them that said dumb shit.
What’s funny and a bit of a bummer, is that you don’t know how funny everyone thinks it is when you share dumb shit like thinks.
Also, you’re here proving every single point against .ml.
Isn't all that from the untrustworthy western propaganda machine?
No, no, it's only untrustworthy American propaganda when it challenges their world view. Right now it's a series of cherry-picked, possibly altered snips designed to push the fascists narrative, so it's great.
Also, everyone who disagrees with you is a liberal.
I'm using Western sources that liberals claim don't exist
And a "3-day special military operation" is an appropriate way to "de-nazify" Ukraine, or does it look more like a land grab?
It looks like the US wanted a war to feed the mic and got one
That's weird, to everyone else it looks like Russia wanted a war to feed it's mic and created one
Hey look! Here’s one now!
Welp, that feels like a red flag. Thanks for the info.
Look at Godlesscommies posts as an example. Complete moron who thinks Ukraine are all Nazis and that Russia is saving the day by murdering them, kidnapping their children, and stealing their land.
They'll never consider that Russia aligned with the Nazis at the beginning of WW2, they'll never see China and Russia as more imperialist than America, and they try to hide behind the guise of communism or socialism being a decent idea because on paper everyday people share the wealth, but ignore that literally every one of their dog shit communist countries are authoritarian dictatorships who have no qualms killing anyone or engaging in genocide.
You don't have a banned tag and there is nothing in the mod logs? What do you mean you were banned?
This is an alt, they said elsewhere. They were banned on their .ml account.
Give murdering a chance!
When it comes up, which isn't too often, I find I'm not really the model archetypal .ml user in outlook and have run afoul of a few people that took exception to that there, but that came in the form of angry comments about the thing I said and either the literal meaning of it or sometimes what they took it to mean, and for a forum that seems entirely appropriate. I was briefly banned from one of the communities there once too because I was accused of being a bot. Funnily enough I actually didn't notice that and it had been overturned by the time found out there was a modlog and figured this out.
It would be hard for me to know obviously, but based on this experience, it doesn't seem to me that they're particularly ban-happy, particularly not instance wide. Kind of a bummer that happened to you. I'm fairly happy basing my account there and speaking my mind when I see fit. I do pick up the prevailing winds and can accurately presume what would and wouldn't be taken well, but I don't generally feel a need to self-censor or worry about bans.
My ban has been lifted now. Are you able to tell me how to find the modlog? I'd like to see what they actually banned me for. There was a point where I said I thought Russia should be broken up and given to it's neighbors and they started responding by claiming I wanted nuclear war and posting pictures of Hitler. It was pretty over the top. I am wondering if that was what got me the ban. When I log in to my ml account I can't find anything, no message or anything, that says what the ban was for.
I'm sure I remembered it being easier, but basically if you access the Lemmy instance in question via a browser rather than an app (might work on apps too but not mine), there's a modlog link at the bottom of the page which shows you the mod activity generally, and then on that page you can filter by user and type the name of the user who's modlog you'd like to see.
Thanks! It says I broke rule 1: "No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia." However I don't see where I did that. Re-reading all the comments I don't say anything like any of those.
https://lemmy.ml/post/39952570
If someone sees where I did it I will admit that I was wrong. I'm not above admitting I'm wrong, but I don't see it.
Hmm yeh that's definitely a pressure point issue there. I guess I do self-censor somewhat in that I know the type of reception that can be expected on that topic if not following the orthodoxy so unless I'm prepared to vigorously defend something I have to say on it, then I generally don't say much on it, wouldn't want to go in half-cocked or try to persuade any one of anything unless I was pretty sure it was a new insightful take that might be able to ride above the fray and bridge some fundamental disagreements.
From my perspective, it's difficult to say how your comments exactly contravene this rule 1 as stated directly. But then you did go ahead and suggest Russia should be wiped off the map as part of your defence of why it isn't reasonable to use corruption as a pretext to wipe another country off the map. I think suggesting that as a fait acompli conclusion and the only option was bound to raise a few eyebrows and while it doesn't neatly explicitly fit the categories mentioned in rule 1, I guess one could say that that suggestion dances around a mixture of 3 of them. Maybe someone was trying to shoehorn the statement in to one of the existing rules as pretext.
Russia being wiped from the map doesn't mean you kill all the people it just is the country and as I said it should be split up. I think there's a difference between internal corruption and invading another country. I believe I was banned because someone simply didn't agree with me and they could have simply just not responded and thumbs down if they didnt like what I said. But whatever though, the person that originally posted just wanted to know what was up with them and I was letting them know.
Edit: I have been on .ml since the Reddit evacuation/diaspora years ago. I have never been banned until just recently. Once I said mental retardation. It wasn't directed at any particular person I wasn't calling anyone specific a name however I understand that people consider that improper and I probably shouldn't have said it. I'll take it. This most recent one I think is a little ridiculous and I previously had not understood why people got so bent out of shape about the instance. Different folks different beliefs etc. At this point I'm going to abandon that instance though because I can't voice an opinion. So just going to move on
If you use web click the three dots > [username] moderation history on a comment
If someone says something happened on the fediverse without providing a link, they're lying.
No proof but instead saying asking for proof is a bad thing.
Oh, hi, it's Mr Asymmetric Demands for Proof again!
How about for a change, you go and dig about in the modlog instead of demanding everyone else does?
Provide a witness statement that you found out their .ml username and searched the modlog and found nothing, and you'll lend your viewpoint a shred of credibility. But without that, all we have to go on is your weird demands for proof that behaviour we all know the .ml mods are renowned for actually happened again for the 1758th time.
I say that you argued with me for hours and hours yesterday after I said that you were as unnecessarily argumentative and bad at backing down as the person you were calling toxic. I recall finding it amusingly ironic. I remember you being particularly upset when I pointed out that calling me names wasn't really proving me wrong. That's when you started swearing at me in DMs and calling me things you weren't prepared to call me in public.
I refuse to supply a link. Am I lying?
TL;DR Demanding proof that something that happens a lot happened again is reality denial masquerading as rationality.
Flat earthers when told to have proof:
More like flat earthers demanding proof that the world is round. Who disbelieves that .ml mods ban a lot of people for critisizing former communist countries?
Weird, there's no history in your mod log.
I'm banned so I am on another instance.
May we have the previous account for proof via mod logs?
So what, I get banned on any other ml and need to make another account? What does that benefit me? The conversation went just like it went here. Except I was called Hitler. To be fair, after being called Hitler I called someone else Hegseth.
No, I'm not saying you're lying, I'm asking for context and proof. It's hard to fake mod logs, but I could say .world banned me for saying Hitler was evil on another account.
Trust me, I know .ml is not great. YePowerTrippingBastards has proof.
My name is the same there, you can look. I did not use any slur in the thread I was banned in. I previously had said something was retarded in another thread and they got hot an bothered but that was not in that thread. The only name I called someone was a fascist after he called me a fascist.
Weird how he's not giving us the alt, I'm sure there's no reason to do that. Context and evidence is bad, I guess.
It's the same username, just on .ml. They're just really obnoxious, the sort who goes down fighting about being allowed to say slurs while pretending it's about some higher principle.
Oh wow I'm so shocked that the person was banned for slurs and claims the mods were evil.
Where did I say mods were evil? Why is it so hard for people here to have a conversation without claiming other people said things they didn't?
Everything that is critical of China or Russia is cia propaganda. Everything their sources say is unquestionable truth. That sums up my experience
After four days on that instance, have you not figured it out for yourself yet?
You will, eventually
Edit: a bit of instance-hopping is not unusual in the beginning. Part of the Lemmy experience is finding an instance where you feel comfortable. That might take a while and more than a few attempts.
Just a side note
The instance you’re on doesn’t really matter very much if you never read the local feed. If you do, you’ll definitely notice the local vibe sooner or later.
If you’re on an instance that is widely defederated, you may also notice that it’s difficult to find communities. Also, people may comment on your instance if it happens to be particularly notorious. The server hardware and bandwidth may also matter in some extreme cases.
Other than that, instances don’t really matter that much.
There are some exceptions to this. Blahaj blocks downvotes, for example. You can downvote a post on Blahaj, but people (like me) with accounts on Blahaj cannot downvote nor can they see downvotes. I'm sure there are other instances doing similar things, as it sounds like Lemmy has a robust set of instance settings/options.
That is a good point. Some instances have special rules and settings like that. Sounds a bit rare though. I haven't heard of many instances that put the extra effort into customizing the experience on that level
The instance matters if you post about anything political. If your instance admins don’t like your posts, they will delete your account. Mods and admins of other instances can only ban you.
To clarify, the instance only matters if that instance is, itself, inherently political (many ARE). There are many other instances which are apolitical and don’t censor posts based on political bias, unless it is especially extreme, but those are exceptions that are explained when it occurs, which is rarely.
Mostly this is an issue with .ml and .world.
The others will often tell you their bias before you join, often in the name itself.
It’s my philosophy that going around, uninformed and uninitiated, and even getting burned a few times is a great way, and possibly the best way, to discover where you really belong on Lemmy. I believe it to be a formative and even a necessary experience.
That’s really my advice for how to find the “correct instance for you”. Everyone here got there by trial and error, and I believe it is a formative enough experience that everyone should go through it. Once it became extremely easy to join Reddit, that’s when it started to go to shit.
It is (nearly) impossible to join and participate in Lemmy if you are a tech-illiterate moron. By the very fact that anyone is here means that everyone at least has a middling level of tech literacy and is somewhat intelligent, or else they would not only never have heard of Lemmy, and would not have been able to figure out how to join. Reddit used to be like that, once upon a time.
To be fair, Lemmy.ml does as well, it forces you to copy a section of The Principles of Communism before joining.
Or one that widely defederates.
I believe mander is the only instance that has a policy of only defederating illegal content.
In contrast .world has a huge de-federation list.
I took a look at those stats a while back, and the defederation procedure totally goes both ways.
As far as I can tell, bigger instances have bumped into issues that were resolved through defederation. Smaller instances haven't faced those kinds of problems, so they haven't defederated with any instances yet.
If all the big instances have defederated your instance, that's clear sign that there might be something wrong with that place. If your instance has defederated from a bunch of other instances, take a look at the size of that instance before drawing conclusions. For example lemmy.world is a special case and a clear outlier.
Why does Lemmy.world defederate so much?
Haven't asked the admins, but here's my guess.
Being the most well known instance means that you get a lot of traffic. Let's say that 1% of the people using your instance are annoying morons. In a smaller instance that 1% translates to maybe one ban a month or whatever. In a bigger place, it becomes a constant onslaught stupid idiot bullshit nobody has the time or energy to deal with. Either you get a bunch of admins and mods to deal with that nonsense or you start banning users more aggressively. If that doesn't help, you may need to look at the instance where those troublemakers come from. If you notice that a particular instance pops up disproportionately often, you might want to consider defederating from it.
However, some part of that drama is public on fediseer. Have a look. Just scroll down to censures given and read the reasons why lemmy.world has defederated from so many instances.
To maintain an overton window firmly within liberalism. Pre-emptively defederating hexbear "as a last resort" gave the game away.
If this was actually the case, they would've been long defederated from ml. That is yet to happen as of now
Yeah, Ive been on .ml for like 5 years as of writing this and I just browse my subscribed feed. My experience has been great!
I’ve tried reading my local and federated feeds but found little value in them. Most posts are either too niche, too uninteresting or just fly straight over my head. Consequently, I prefer to stick with the subscribed feed almost exclusively. That’s where I can reliably find stuff worth my time.
No, I don't think 4 days is enough to distinguish between a user's hot take and an instance's position. I didn't focus on the local feed, so I wouldn't have known. Most of the posts I've seen have been centered on Linux and privacy.
As I keep scrolling, though, I can see some troubling posts.
OK, I apologize for my tone. I’m not here to criticize you. I am legitimately interested in helping:
All of those things you mentioned? Do all of that. Focus on your local feed, check out comments that originate from your instance. That’s how you will get a good feel for those who subscribed to your instance.
And, as others have mentioned, you can sign up to any instance and still interact, however, you are still beholden to the rules of rest of Lemmy. Follow the rules of whatever community you’re commenting or posting in, sure, but, aside from the instances that are defederated, you can interact, post, comment, vote, whatever, regardless of your home instance. It’s just that a lot of people take particular care in choosing their home instance, and they choose a home instance that sociopolitically aligns with their own views.
This is neither necessary, nor demanded from the vast majority of Lemmy users, but it is good practice. It’s just how Lemmy was designed, and if you’re not interested in doing that, fine.
Like any other online interaction forum, what really matters is the quality of your posts and or comments.
Edited: spells and grams
It's all good, I appreciate it. I've been approaching Lemmy as a reddit alternative, so I'm still learning about how to explore the fediverse. I'll review instances more critically, thank you.
Lemmy is an excellent Reddit alternative, but it’s a bit different, and it’s worth taking the time to learn how it works.
If you have any questions, let me know 😊
I don't think I've ever posted on a community in my instance... But yeah, I'm not federated with .ml, so I am happy.
Because of the way they are.
Tankies.
Useful idiots of Russia and China.
I am subbed to quite a few communities over there, zero issues for me.
I unfortunately stumbled into lemmy.ml from /c/all... Every time it's just anger and communist propaganda, which is one of the reasons I left reddit. I've completed muted the instance and my experience on Lemmy has improved significantly.
because if you aren't pro-communist, into revisionist history, and pro murdering millions to built a utopia, you are a fascist to them.
pretty much every harassing/crazy/stupid reply i get on lemmy is from .ml users too.
spoilers : if you're murdering millions you are not building a utopia.
The ends don't justify the means; you are not guaranteed with the ends, so sometimes you just end up with the means.
the fun part is asking them how they'd feel if someone murdered them for the utopia, and all the sudden they are not so hot on violence.
That's because most of them think they'd be running the utopia. They're just the other side of the same coin with authoritarians/fascist they just think they're gonna be in charge this time.
4 day old .ml account, asking about why .ml is bad.
Is either a troll stirring shit up as is the M.O. of a typical .ml clown, or
accidentally made their account on one of the shittiest instances in the fediverse and actually wasn’t to know what’s so bad about them.
Regardless of which, the answer is the same:
Leave .ml and you’ll be better off, or remain there and enjoy the walled garden.
.ml devs have basically made it so that new users see .ml at the top of the randomly join instances pretty much always. There was a post about it a little while back. They're manipulating the join page to get new users to join there. So I'm guessing this new user joined it because it's what they saw as an option to join the fediverse on the signup page
They unironically simp for dictatorships
You might look on MeanwhileOnGrad. Many of the posts criticize .ml specifically.
It is the oldest instance, so many people join it, even if it is no longer the most popular. People complain about the general userbase for having a noticeable pro-Russia bias, but most of the criticism I see is directed at the admins specifically. They have this same bias and aggressively censor people with it. Other admins may enforce strict rules for the instance they envision of course but .ml is also noticeably not open about this. Much of the removed content is censored with the justification of "Rule 1" or similar, but as far as I'm aware these rules don't exist or at least are hidden from everyone expected to comply with them.
Edit: Forgot to mention, some people also complain that a portion of donations towards Lemmy's development goes to paying for .ml server costs. One of them also had a controversial take on trans rights I think, but I don't remember the details. At least one of the admins is fairly active and argumentative as well. When the admins are involved in this sort of drama it reflects poorly on the instance as a whole.
How can you be pro-Russia and left-wing? Russia is definitely not a left-wing country.
It's bullshit campism for lazy thinkers
I don't have an issue with ml users in general as they are probably a diverse group, but the comms on that instance should be avoided, because of the pro authoritarian censorship.
3 posts up:
It's not all of lemmy.ml, but some have very strong opinions are quite hostile about it.
Because sometimes you get what you deserve. They are completely out to lunch mentally. Some of the worst have to be paid shill accounts. No one who lives in the US can really believe that garbage. Unless they are rich and have never had a job. Block and block often.
you are one?
do you know what ml stands for?
machine learning
honestly i thought that's what it was as well; the sheer disappointment when i found out ... ugh
MotherLoad
Mountain lion
Sh.itjust.works also has one of the most abrasive trolls who ban evades and attacks users and admins. You may have unfortunately ran into them under multiple names.
I think we are one of the larger servers so we just have a more visible share than smaller instances. Our admins are pretty on top of complaints about users.
Hello :)
Every "meme" I've seen come from the .ml community has been dogshit, I don't think they know what a meme is.
Threadiverse's liberal-at-best reddit exodus userbase
Because liberals don't like being reminded of their part in the growing state of fascism in this country. They didn't like people pointing out they are what they claim to hate. That they are as delusional about their politicians as their conservative counterparts.
Please please move to China or Russia or NK, pick one. I'll pay for your plane ticket....take some sunflower seeds with you.
Hard to tell if MAGA or BlueMAGA, they sound the same
It's hilarious to me that you're not even paid to be a russian mouthpiece. You're more maga than maga is...
look OP this is what we mean
more than likely this is an ml user alt account calling democratic people nazis
If the shoe fits
What that you're a russian troll?
Hows that incrementalism working out for you? Small baby steps to the right defending fascism.
Oligarchy polling numbers are to the lowest they've ever been, the Revolution appears to be working out quite well. The only reason that liberals hate people on the actual left is because we remind you what bad people you are and the things that you support. You always support our movements after they've gained a majority approval and fight like hell against them until then.
Lot of assumptions there and a lot of empty words. All of that sounds like protecting the status quo, the white supremacy and fascism that it was built on.